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Ethnography of daturas in Africa - Daturas belong to the tropane Solanaceous group of plants, traditionally used in the Old and New World for their intoxicant properties. In Africa two species - Datura stramonium, and D. metel - are used in religious, initiatory, divinatory, magic-therapeutic rites, and also as tools during trials by ordeal, in courts of law, and in criminal proceedings. The present study describes some African traditional cults and rites where daturas are involved, with a particular focus on the Bori possession cult among the Hausas of Niger, the feminine initiatory rite among the Tsongas of Mozambique, the ordeal ceremony among the Ba-Rongas of South Africa, the leba shay Abyssinian juridical institution, and the datura's ritual complex of Senegalese marabouts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"The mescalbean among the North American Natives" - With the name "mescalbean cult" or "mescalism", a group of ritual practices of the North American Planes Natives are named, during which a vegetal psychoactive source was employed. The human relationship with this visionary source originates starting from the most remote antiquity, and lasted until the end of the XIX century of our era. In the present study the historical, ethnographical, archaeological, and mythological aspects of these rites are reviewed, bringing clarifications on the problem of the relationship of mescalism with peyotism, and on some terminological and ethnobotanical confusions which dragged in the studies for several decades. Lastly, some ethological aspects concerning the animal relationship with the mescalbean are analyzed, and which could clarify the origins of the human relationship with this intoxicant source. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]